The Sharia Debate in Canada

“Justice is not a mere consumer product and
citizens are more than retail consumers,” she says. She argues that if
the proposed change is implemented, it will amount to privatising
Ontario’s Family Law and placing it in the hands of private
practitioners who have already started marketing their services as
alternate justice providers whereas they are no more than “for-profit
religious judges”

The debate that has been raging in the Muslim community in the Canadian
province of Ontario for the last several months is important because what
is at issue could spill across to other countries, from the most
conservative to those that are still in the process of finding a workable
balance between religion and modernity.

The lines are drawn, the divisions are clear and one can only watch with
mounting interest the outcome. The issue involves family and personal law.
A conservative section of Canadian Muslims, many of them Pakistanis, would
like to have personal and family disputes, and questions arising out of
such disputes, settled in accordance with what they call Shari’a law
instead of laws applicable to other Canadians. Those opposing this attempt
argue that since there is no one agreed definition of Shari’a, it will
lead to bitter sectarian controversies, and divide the Muslim community at
a time when it needs to join hands, move forward and dispel the label of
reaction and extremism that has been plastered across its face. Muslim
women are fearful that the new arrangement will work against them and be
used by men — fathers, husbands, brothers — to deny them their rights
as equal citizens.

The Ontario Attorney General Marion Boyd has thrown a spanner in the works
by recommending that the practice not only be adopted and continued but
that “Muslim principles” — which she has failed to define despite
being asked to do so — be allowed as a substitute for the Ontario Family
Law Act. When asked what provisions of the Act were in conflict with what
she called “Muslim principles”, she failed to provide an answer.
Arbitration by the Shari’a-based tribunals will be binding.

One progressive Muslim community leader who has taken up the cudgels on
behalf of those opposing the conservative move is Rizwana Jafri, vice
principal of a high school in the city of Toronto and president of the
Muslim Canadian Congress. In an open letter to Premier Dalton McGuinity of
Ontario, she points out that the bid to make use of religious laws to
settle family disputes through binding arbitration as a substitute to the
Ontario family law court system has deeply divided the Muslim community
and caused serious concern among women’s groups and children’s
advocates. She says the Muslim Canadian Congress is opposed to all
religious courts and tribunals that trespass the public domain. She argues
that whether they are Rabbinical or Christian courts, Shari’a-based
arbitration tribunals or any other religious-based quasi-judicial body
cannot, and should not, be allowed to substitute the existing court and
judicial system which is based on laws created by parliament whose members
are accountable to those who elected them.

Ms Jafri, who is married and the mother of two children, writes that under
the cover of “Muslim principles” what is being attempted is
“Shari’a by stealth.” She argues that Attorney General Boyd by
maintaining that opting for arbitration under Shari’a will be voluntary,
is reducing justice to a “mere consumer commodity”, something that is
antithetical to both Islamic and Canadian values. “Justice is not a mere
consumer product and citizens are more than retail consumers”, she adds.
She also argues that if the proposed change is implemented, it will amount
to privatising Ontario’s Family Law and placing it in the hands of
private practitioners who have already started marketing their services as
alternate justice providers whereas they are no more than “for-profit
religious judges”.

Ms Jafri quotes Prof Omid Safi, who teaches Islamic Studies at Colgate
University, New York, who wrote, “The use of religious law as a
substitute for laws created by parliament, and the establishment of a
multi-tier legal system — one for average Canadians and one for Muslim
Canadians, and others for Catholic or Jewish Canadians — is not only
unjust, but also detrimental to the well being of all Canadian
citizens.” He said that he was “alarmed at the prospects of repressive
Muslim governments around the world pointing to Canada, and the
implementation of ‘Shari’a’ within Canada, as a justification for
their oppressive legal systems. This is not a comment on Islamic
jurisprudence as a whole, but rather on the repressive interpretations of
Shari’a found in those countries. It is unrealistic to think that the
ayatollahs of Iran, the proponents of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and other
countries will not use this to promote the viability of their oppressive
visions.”

The last word should be Ms Jafri’s who wrote, “Our position is not
against religion. On the contrary, we stand for the constitutional
guarantee of freedom of religion. However, freedom of religion does not
mean that we dilute laws and strengthen the power of rabbis, imams and
priests over their communities, especially the most vulnerable.”